Letters to the editor

Related Media

Respect at the Peak School

Respect is one of those words that is bandied about without anyone really understanding the definition. When I was in the military, it was respect for authority. Of course, it really meant respect those who rank higher than you. We are told to respect our elders. Those who are older than you. Do you see the trend? Last night I had the pleasure to go to my daughter’s conference at the Peak School and I learned a new definition of the term respect.

The Peak School offers respect of children, respect of their pace of learning, respect enough to include children in the path of their learning. Our daughter understands her perspective and needs are important to the other students and the teachers. Perhaps it is best said in a quote from her: “Dad, even though the people who go to my school aren’t related, we all feel like we are brothers and sisters. You know, one big happy family.”

Spark plugs in the “GREEN MACHINE” have become fouled; its engine is misfiring and slowing down. Proponents of “human caused” global warming are, or should be, embarrassed by the fact that for the last 15 years global temperatures have not risen. Greenies are panicking, blaming “human caused” global warming for everything from difficult pregnancies to the spread of AIDS. To counter the diminished lack of interest by the public in “human caused” global warming, school children are being brainwashed into believing this fallacy.

Steven F. Hayward covers the subject in an excellent article in the April 29, 2013, issue of The Weekly Standard.

“Climate change” has affected Mother Earth for a million years or more. Luckily we are not facing another ice age, at least not in the foreseeable future. Modest swings in temperature have been recorded over hundreds of years of the history of our earth.

Unfortunately, the GREEN MACHINE enjoys much power through ill-applied authority given by environmental laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Rare and Endangered Species Act and volumes of regulations generated by federal agencies enforcing their ideas as to the intent of each law.

We could be enjoying a much more robust economy if the shackles of environmental legislation were loosened, not removed, but limited to realistic interpretations by bureaucrats. Just think how much cheaper a gallon of gasoline would be if energy development was encouraged instead of restricted at every step. We should be using our abundant resources, and opening up a higher standard of living to all our citizens.

Dick Prosence, Meeker

Ideas have consequences

A couple of recent events present stark illustrations of where the pro-choice mind-set has escorted us as a society. “Reproductive freedom” sounds so wonderful, but when we see what it really means, some of the shine fades, to say the least.

First we go to Kermit Gosnell’s murder trial. Gosnell is the Philadelphia abortionist who is being charged with four counts of murder, including those of a 41-year-old woman and of three infants who survived his late-term abortion procedure. Gosnell’s former clinic worker testified that the babies were killed by being stabbed with scissors in the back of their necks.

And in March, during a hearing in the Florida House of Representatives on a bill that would obligate doctors to provide care for a child that survived an abortion, Alisa LaPolt Snow, representing Planned Parenthood, stunned the committee, and the world. Repeatedly the legislators asked her, essentially, “If a baby is born alive, as a result of an abortion, and is breathing on a table, what should happen to that baby?” Her only reply was to repeat the pro-choice mantra that “any decision should be between the woman, her family, and the physician.”

I think it’s time we realize that ideas have consequences. If we think, as the court has ruled, that the unborn have no rights, then this is what comes of such thinking.

For many years, our laws have paved the way for this exact situation. Any suggestion that the pro-choice crowd finds these events surprising or objectionable is irrational, or phony, or both.